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Day: September 4, 2018

While rainbows do occasionally appear in the skies above Russia, the Putin regime has pursued a consistent course of official homophobia and avoidance of the country’s out-of-control HIV epidemic. Photo by the Russian Reader

The Justice Ministry has drafted a law bill that would introduce a new procedure for running foreign programs in Russia for preventing the spread of HIV. The text of the draft law has been published for public discussion.

The ministry proposes introducing a mandatory notification procedure for all noncommercial organizations planning to combat HIV in Russia, but which receive foreign funding, whether from other countries, international organizations, foreign nationals, stateless persons, their representatives, and Russia legal entities and individuals receiving money and other property from these sources.

After receipt of such a notification, the Justice Ministry will have a month to review it. It will then either have to issue permission to operate in Russia or a substantiated rejection. If a noncommercial organization continues to work on preventing HIV after receiving a rejection notice, it will be abolished.

As the BBC has noted, four foundations preventing the spread of HIV in Russia have been registered as “foreign agents” by the Justice Ministry.

Approximately a million Russians are infected with HIV. In July, RBC reported a spike of infections in Moscow. The Russian Health Ministry responded to the report by claiming the situation was stable. It urged journalists to focus only on official statistics.

Russian Political Prisoners: The Last (?) Fundraiser
The people who run PayPal knuckle under to national governments. So, it is possible that after September 19, 2018, they will strip me of the ability to accept donations to political prisoners through my PayPal account. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure this doesn’t happen, but the people who run PayPal might not necessarily rule in my favor.

This particular fundraiser for political prisoners is not comprehensive (I’ll hold a comprehensive fundraiser later). I’m asking that this time you send donations for Russia’s political prisoners to my PayPal account: